Among other great advantages, buying a membership allows you to send messages and chat requests to all members. You will also be able to participate in group chat sessions and post on the discussion boards. In addition, you can control access to your picture album, see who has added you to their favorites and given you access to their private picture albums.

Most digital cameras and scanners come with an installation CD that includes a picture editor program. You can use this program to reduce the size of your picture and save it as a JPEG.

If you do not have a picture editor program you can download similar ones for free, such as Picasa (by Google) or Paint.net (this is a very complete program but is slightly less user friendly then Picasa).

You can also send your pictures to us by e-mail at the following address infoservice2@voxtel.com, please include your username, password and where you would like to picture uploaded (i.e.: profile picture or in an album).

Your picture album can contain pictures of you, your family, your daily life, events and vacations, illustrations or images that you like and that represent you well. You do not have to appear in all pictures that you add to your album.

Main reasons a picture added to an album will be refused:

The picture is not sufficiently clear.

The member included personal information: full name, other user names not used on this site, e-mail address, website address, or other personal information.

A picture is obscene, aggressive, hateful, racist, abusive, untruthful, defamatory, or does not follow the general usage conditions.

A picture contains scenes of pornography (nudity and erotic pictures are accepted).

To choose exactly which members can see your picture, add it to your picture album and make your album private.

You should know that 9 out of 10 members will not respond to messages received from members who do not have a validated profile picture. If you do not have a validated profile picture your response level will be much lower than if you have one.

Internet navigators conserve data in their memory to increase your internet speed. This is called cache memory (also called temporary internet files). If your old picture still appears after we sent you an e-mail confirming that your new picture was validated it is because your old picture is saved in your cache memory.

Make sure that your introduction is not too long. With most recording devices, a 1-minute-long video will yield a file small enough to be uploaded.

If you use a high-definition recording device such as a professional-quality webcam or digital video camera, lower the quality and resolution settings before recording your introduction.

To convert your video file to another format, you can use the program included with your recording device or a free online conversion service like Zamzar (very simple, requires an email address) or Media Converter (no email address required).

Visits to your profile may simply indicate curiosity instead of true interest. If a member who visited your profile caught your attention, do not hesitate to communicate with the member to make your interest know and start a discussion!

Please realize that once you send a person a message they will review your profile and make sure that they feel you are compatible. They may decide you are not compatible for several reason including; you may be a smoker and they are looking for a non-smoker (or vice versa), you might want children but the other person does not, your personal description might express certain values that conflict with the other person's values, etc.

One thing is for sure, the only way to find out is to contact the person! Always avoid negative messages like asking why the member visited your profile but didn't contact you. Instead, try expressing why YOU contacted the member, what caught your attention and why you think you are compatible!

Visits to your profile may simply indicate curiosity instead of true interest. Don't be surprised or offended if some members who visit your profile do not correspond to all your criteria or are in a category that is different to yours. For example, some new members visit profiles from all categories looking for inspiration in the creation of their own profile.

Communication

When you receive a new message it will be indicated in the «message» tab on the menu bar. The number in parentheses indicates the number of new messages received. If there is no number between parentheses this means you have not received any new messages.

In the notification options section, you can choose to receive an e-mail notification when you receive a new message. This option is particularly practical for members who do not login to the site every day but who do not want to miss any new messages.

There are two reason that can explain this situation:

You logged into the site and viewed your new messages prior to reading the notification message we sent you. Disregard the message, it is not longer pertinent.

In the past few years, dating and social networking sites have been confronted with the serious problem of frauders who create fake profiles try and make money. We take this very seriously and are doing everything possible to monitor our site and delete these profiles if we find any.

These frauders however can send several hundred e-mails within a few minutes. We erase their messages as soon as we become aware of their profile, but you may be sent a new message notification before we are able to erase all fraudulent messages. If you receive a notification saying you have a new message, but when you login there is no message, it is most likely that you received a fraudulent message and that we deactivated the profile and erased the messages.

There are several tools available to help you get to know other members. Premium, Gold and Platinum members can see which members added them to their favorites list or granted them access to their private picture albums. Also, all members - paying and non-paying – can see which members visited their profile.

If a member added you to their favorites but has not contacted you don't hesitate to contact the member yourself. If you are interested in a member who visited your profile but didn't send you a message, don't hesitate to contact the member to express your interest so you can start a discussion!

If a member is bothering you, the first thing to do is cease all forms of contact with the member.

Once you have done that, simply click on found in the person's profile and the member will be added to your blacklist. You will no longer receive any new messages or chat requests from this number.

If the member breaks any of the site's general terms of use, for example if the member sent you threatening, hurtful or harassing messages, do not hesitate to report the member to our customer service. Our members' security is paramount to us.

There are several reasons for this:

A member can only chat with one person at a time. A member who is already having a chat conversation will appear as unavailable.

You need to have the most recent version of Flash to be able to use the chat application. Members using an older navigator, who have not downloaded the latest version of Flash, or are using a mobile phone that does not support Flash (iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch, etc) cannot receive chat requests even when they are on-line.

Finally, to minimize search times our list of members on-line is updated every few minutes, however the members available for chat list is updated every few seconds. Furthermore, when a member leaves the site by clicking on «Log out» in the upper right corner without logging out that person is instantly removed from the chat list but it takes a few minutes for that member to be removed from the members on-line list.

Always review cupid's suggestions, they are sent to you by e-mail and include members that correspond to your interests and search criteria. If you are not receiving cupid's suggestions please refer to you notification options.

Also, check your news often; it gives you updates on your favorites and members who have expressed interest in you. In your news section you will be advised which members added you to their favorites, who gave you access to their private albums, and which members visited your profile.

Finally, we suggest that you read all the news for the site where you will find updates on all members who might interest you but are not in your favorites.

Our search results are dynamic. They are determined by the members visibility level, which varies based on several factors (if the member is on-line, communicated with other members recently, etc.) Because the results change continuously you cannot view more than two pages at a time.

E-mail Address

Firstly, go to your notification options, enter your new e-mail in the section that says «Your e-mail address» and click on «Save». A message will be sent to your new e-mail address confirming the change.

Once this is done, go to your e-mail and look for a message from us asking you to follow a link to confirm you new e-mail address. Click on the link. Your e-mail address change will then be effective.

Important: until you click on the link in the e-mail we sent to you, your e-mail address change is NOT effective and you will continue to receive messages at your old e-mail address.

All you have to do is go to your notification options and deselect all notifications that you no longer wish to receive. Don't forget to click on «save» when you are finished.

All our notifications are offered to you free of charge. You can choose to receive only certain notifications or none at all.

Note however, that e-mails with regard to lost passwords, billing, picture and profile validation e-mails, and answers to your questions from our customer service will still be sent to your e-mail address.

Yes, a member one your blacklist can still see if you are on-line. Our main priority is for our members to meet someone, so we do not offer the option of making yourself invisible. The members on you blacklist will not, however, be able to message you or request a chat session.

Security/confidentiality

Our members' security and confidentiality are amongst our main priorities. All of our services are designed with your security and confidentiality in mind. Under no circumstance can other members find your e-mail address, full name, telephone number or home address. It is up to you to decide with whom you share your personal information.

Please note that we highly recommend against sharing your personal information with members when you first communicate. All the tools necessary to have full conversations in complete security are available on the website; use these tools until you are sure that you want to share your personal information with this person.

We also strongly recommend that you do not add members that you just met to your social networking programs, such as Facebook. While you have some control over you personal information on Facebook, your Facebook contacts can still obtain a lot of personal information about you. We thus recommend that you use the tools provided on our site to communicate with all members until you get to know them.

The e-mail address that you provide us is strictly used for us to communicate with you. Your e-mail address will never be given or sold to anyone. If you agree to receiving our partners e-mails, we will send the offers to you, they will never be given you e-mail address.